


Binary Lives

by FleshWick13



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Might turn into a series, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-16
Updated: 2015-06-16
Packaged: 2018-04-04 17:46:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4147035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FleshWick13/pseuds/FleshWick13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which someone has a cousin and Janet is special.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Binary Lives

There are some things that you know without need for any logic or understanding.

(Like when you are asleep and dreams are still alive, and you see your father there and when you say, “How?”, he laughs and asks, “You didn’t really think a little cough could take me out.”

Or.

At the dinner table when someone starts asking all these question about your sister and you’re split between wanting to know and shouting at them to shut up because. It. Just. Isn’t. Done.)

Janet had always know that there were two of her-

There was the one who was born with the glass shoe and lived in a three bed room house with two cars and a dog, and there was the one who slept shivering on the wooden floorboards in the slums where monsters fought.

There was the one whose mother baked a lemon tart when she got into a university with red bricks and ivy creeping up the walls, and the one who stole handbags and hearts in the hopes of leaving her neighbourhood.

There was the one who was always pestering her cousin about his job and plans (not nearly enough ambition, and far too many morals), and the one who wore a human mask to the ball and tricked a prince into marrying her.

They swap at the stroke for midnight to repeat the day in a different world.

               -Neither of them have any answers.

At first - when words were still clumsy mysteries solved with her tongue - she couldn't comprehend why others got angry when she spoke of those who weren’t there.

First in one home:

“What do you mean your father didn’t exist yesterday?”

“Janie! You can’t just take that; we have more than enough food at home. Yes, even tomorrow.”

“There is no other mother, no other city. I don’t understand it, the doctors can’t…Stop saying that - Just stop saying that!”

The results were more or less the same with the other.

(“You think I'd be doing _this_ , if your father had given me a ring!”)

They did not know why every night Janet goes to sleep and wakes up the same day in a different bed. In fact, they didn't believe her. Accusing her of, (and Janet really can not understand this because they never caught her before, so she can't be the boy who called wolf, and anyway no one fears  _wolves_ in Gotham), lying.

(For a while she thinks it might happen to them too and that they are the liars; most humans are good at denial she’s found.

“Now Janie I want you to understand that just because your grandfather is with the angels he’s still watching over you so you should miss him too much.”

“How?”

“Look sweetie whenever you feel sad you just-”

“No, not that. I don’t _care_ about that. I mean how is he going to see me if his eyes are rotted- bodies decompose after eight years and I'll only be fifteen then.”

“Janet what did I say about being tactful. Now his body may no longer be working, but his spirit –“

“I don't believe in souls.”

“His mind then, has moved onto a better place and he’ll be having a good time there”

“That's the same thing. Don't you get it? He's dead”)

It get easier when her cousin Phillip is older, more like her – more rational, not a romantic.

But not completely, for fairytales will never truly leave a child, and she can see how deeply her cousin dreams.

(Blue and Red, Stars and Stripes, Shields and Serums)

“How do I know it’s the truth?”

“I'm not lying. I don't lie.”

He stares.

"I lie better than this."

Conceding this with a nod, he continues, 

“Its not a dream?”

“I said so, it's real”

“Then bring me something back. Proof.”

It takes a few tries but Janet finds that by concentrating really hard about it, she can bring something over at the switch. The first time it happens she brings a crumpled page from a magazine – an article on some rich brats parents being murdered- its dirty, water marked, and incomplete but the words atop of the page blaze.

**Gotham Gossips \- Wealthy Couple Murdered in Cold Blood, In Front Of Young Son- Just How Unsafe Will The City Get?**

It is enough.

When she shows it to him he glances up from arranging his Captain America card and tells her,

“Oh.”

The flash of triumph that hits her is sweet and cool. It causes her to, when he asks, dark eyes serious as the ocean, “But, why you?”, to be generous.

Janet tell him another thing she knows.

“I’m special.”


End file.
